Bilbo

So my intentions were to re-do the mini guinea pig pattern, but I got sidetracked and ended up designing a completely new bear! I wanted something with a big, round head and tiny tiny arms and legs - as tiny as I could get them...

Bilbo is the result. His little arms are a petite 3cm long and 1cm wide! I showed them to my Husband last night who remarked that they looked like little furry poos! And Bilbo is completely hand sewn again (I am really enjoying my hand sewing at the moment. I think it probably has a lot to do with not really fitting at the sewing machine comfortably anymore!).

Some Boisterous Brothers for Pixie

Two more mini guinea pigs to keep Pixie company - Oscar is the green one (he reminds me of Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street) and Pipkin is the cocoa one. Both are now on etsy and bearpile.

After making three of these little critters now, I've decided that I'm not happy with my pattern. They're cute and 'stylised' looking, but not quite right. So, if I feel motivated enough, I hope to make some modifications and see if I can make them a little more realistic. (Might also help if I stop using green, purple and pink fur too!) :P

Pixie the Guinea Pig

This is the little purple mini guinea pig I mentioned I was hand sewing in my last post. She was a lovely change to the big bears. And if I get a chance I might make a few more like her. She's currently on bearpile and etsy. (buying through Etsy is your best bet if you don't want to miss out on her).

Merry Christmas

After being wiped out by a summer cold and chesty cough, then having Chelsea come down with it too, then having my pelvis seize up and not being about to walk for a good 24hours, this week has been a bit of a bad run! But today was lovely! Mark has finished work for the year, so we took Oliver and Chelsea for a walk through the mangrove board-walk 5mins from our house with the tide lapping at the edge on the walkway, and then spent the evening with Mark's Mum and the amazing street party they put on every Christmas eve. (I also hand sewed a tiny 4" pink and purple mohair baby guinea pig because I 'needed' to create something different, and little! She's very cute, and I'll get photos when I get a chance over the next few days).

I thought I'd share this photo of the three of us as well. Chelsea and Mark have their matching Santa shirts on, and I got stuck with just a stretchy red singlet top (there was no fitting this belly into a normal shirt!).

I'm almost 36 weeks now, and it feels like my bump is all out front. Bub gets the hiccups every day and gives me LOTS of squirms and wriggles when I lye on my side. I'm having fun at the moment imagining what bub will look like, and trying to gloss over how much my life will change with two mini-people in my care. Christmas is a good distraction though, I just keep telling myself to get through Christmas first, then new year... then it'll be time for baby!


Hope you all have a fantastic day tomorrow!!! Eat lots (but don't get sick!) and enjoy watching your loved ones opening presents!

Waffle Bear

If I'm really honest, I would say that I'm feeling pretty crappy this week. I have turned into one of those constantly irritable and grumpy mums who loose it over the smallest things. AND - I've starting having day sleeps, which is HUGE for me. Even in my exhaustion after Chelsea was born I couldn't sleep during the day. I've never been able to, and when I did I ended up waking up feeling worse than when I went down. But the last two days I've had lovely day time naps.

So because of this, bear making seems to be just that little more difficult than usual! The latest bear Waffle has actually been sitting there in pieces for quite a few days now, just waiting for me to get a burst of energy and put him together.








He's another of my 'all-year' Christmas bears, as his christmassy accessories can be removed/hidden leaving just his gorgeous fur (see below).

A Christmas Wish

FINALLY - I managed to get this big guy done! Life really got in the way of my sewing this week! I had visitors, and playgroup break up parties and rum-ball cooking and present buying and storm surviving to do... But last night I got stuck in and got Wish done. It was an interesting experience though as I was getting rather regular braxton hicks contractions the whole time... which continued throughout the night, but seem to have subsided this morning. (My prediction/hope is that this bub is going to come a little early! Maybe not THIS early, but maybe in two weeks or so would be nice...)




So anyways, back to Wish Bear... I'm calling him my 'all-year-Christmas-bear' as he is so subtly Christmas-themed that he really would look fine displayed all year. His fur is a stunning long white faux fur with silver threads - very festive! And I've just popped him up on bearpile too. Now to see if I have the energy to get the next big bear done. (Which is also slightly Christmas themed, so it would probably be a good idea to make him/her before christmas! :P)

Calendar's are up for sale at ETSY

I have finalised and ordered my calendars. VERY limited numbers!

I have 4 available in the BLUE

4 available in the PINK

and 4 available in the YELLOW

I have no idea how quickly they will sell (or if they will sell at all), but if you were one of the people who expressed an interest, feel free to check out the listings as it has all the important information!

Australia Summer Storms

I'm not quite sure if I've complained about the weather here in 'Sunny Queensland' over the last few weeks or not... if not, I'll fill you all in now! The weather has been crap. And that's an understatement! The nightly weather reports show the forecast for the next 7 days - and it has been solid rain graphics for weeks now.

This week it was solid storm graphics, complete with the little bolts of lightning coming down from the cartoony grey clouds. I saw this, but dismissed it! The days had actually been quite nice for a change, and I managed to get some washing done. Then yesterday afternoon I got an emergency alert phone message explaining that severe hail storms were on their way. I went outside and the sky was clear, no clouds, soft wind blowing... for all intensive purposes a beautiful summer day. About an hour later I could hear soft rumbling noises in the background. The sky was still clear and bright, so I dismissed it as neighbourhood noise.



About half an hour after that, the sky changed colour. The air had that electric feel to it and the rumbling noise was louder. Chelsea and I went outside and sure enough some ominous looking clouds were heading over. I quickly grabbed the washing off the line and took some photos. This is looking from our side gate towards the neighbours house across the road. Within about 2mins of taking this photo Mark got home from work and the clouds opened.



We had so much rain in such a short period of time that our back patio flooded (much to Chelsea's amusement, but not Olivers!). Oliver is a bit of a Princess dog and doesn't like loud noises or getting wet, so he took refuge inside, behind the couch!


It was all over within half an hour or so, and we got lucky that the hail stones were only pebble sized. But it had obviously damaged the power lines somewhere, and we went without electricity from 5:30pm till 12pm. Right on dinner time! And Chelsea's bed time. So we all had a rather miserable night last night. And tempted as I was I decided not to try and finish my bear by candle light... goodness knows what he would have looked like by the light of day! :P So hopefully, if I can stop rambling on here, I can go do a bit more work on him tonight!

The last Kool Aid bear

Way back in July I was feeling adventurous and did a whole heap of mohair dying experiments. Most of the bears had already been sewn up and adopted out, but there was one that I hadn't gotten around to finishing...



... Meet Misty! She is a little sweet heart at 9" tall, and very unique in her splotchy fur and sweet Kool Aid smell! She is now on bearpile for anyone interested.

(and yes, the rest of the big 22" bears are coming. Tonight I'm working on one made in the same awesome fur as Willa)

2011 Calendars

I was thinking this morning that I never say hello to all of you who read this blog. I always just go straight into whatever incredibly fascinating thing it is that I have to say at that particular time, which is a little self-absorbed isn't it! :P

So hello. I am sure there are many of you who read this blog whom I will never meet, and will never actually know have even been here. I hope your mid-December day has gone along wonderfully whether you're braving the heat and rain in Australia or the cold and snow in the northern hemisphere.

As a little piece of interest, I was wondering (if you felt up to it) if you would leave a little comment letting me know how you stumbled across this blog. I know I have some blogs on my reading list that were bizarre chance finds :)

Also, I wanted to give a heads up to anyone interested, that I'm going to produce an 'Emma's Bears Calendar' for 2011. I will be ordering them tomorrow some time and was wanting to get a really rough idea of how many to get!? I'll stock them in my etsy store and sell them over the next month or two (or 12 if it takes that long! :P), but am stumped on how many will actually sell!? Ah, the joys of supply and demand!

So also, if you feel up to it, I'd love you to leave me a little message here or send me an email at eleb2000@hotmail.com if you think you might be interested - no obligation. They will cost $25 and will be about 11" by 8" (20cm by 28cm). Postage within Australia will be $2, internationally $7.

Here are some screen dumps I managed to get to give you a sneak peek.





*** UPDATE - I can also order the calender in the pink-tones background or the creamy background as well ***

Creatures

So I'm still stuck for what to call these guys. In all my photos I've ended up just labelling them as 'creatures', so that might just have to do.

They are quite large too. I think I got a bit carried away in my design. The original plan was for them to maybe be about 10-12". Nice and petite and good for a child to hold. But then I remembered that I wanted to use up the crazy bright fur, which was the whole point of making them. And they ended up standing in at 32" (83cm).

Chelsea LOVED them when I finished them on Friday. She tried to carry them both at once, but one is roughly the same size as her, so it didn't work real well. I think her preference was for the yellow one, but I quite liked the blue better. They are completely child-safe too, down to the sewn-on felt eyes, embroidered nose, joint-less limbs and body stuffed solely with polyfill.

I am just about to list them on etsy too, and plan to market them as children's toys. Expensive children's toys mind you, but unique ones! Not sure if there is a market out there for toddler-sized, bug-eyed, rainbow coloured, fluffy and floppy 'creatures', but I suppose time will tell!

*** Update - I've named them Pluto and Junket, as it seemed like they needed some kind of identity! And they are now on bearpile and etsy ***

New Creatures

If I was feeling the clock ticking a few weeks ago when I made this post, I'm hearing it loud and clear now! And after my spout of panda's and polar's and grizzly's, most of whom I ordered in mohair especially for, I am now feeling the need to use up some of my extensive collection to get some money back, and clear some space before bub.

So after rummaging around in the cupboard for a while, I found a massive stash of very bright faux fur that I'd only used a tiny bit of ( mainly because it was a little too bright for my bears!). I decided I would find a way to use it... and sketched this funny looking critter up yesterday.

Being the kind of person that I am, I decided to put aside the other bears I was working on (I've got a couple of gorgeous long pile 22" bears in the same patterns as Oreo, Blizzard and Banjo in the works - just waiting on some massive joints so I can finish them), and got to work on the critters last night.

They've actually been a little more labour intensive than I anticipated, but I think they're going to be pretty unique! This is a little sneak peek of the bits waiting to be stuffed and assembled. Will upload photos when they're done... just need a name for them now!:P

Banjo the Grizzly

The grizzly is done! He is so cute - even in this massive size. And his fur is just to dye for - I love a really nice rich tipped fur, and these two colours are awesome.



I've popped his listing on bearpile as well.

Oreo and Blizzard

So the custom bears are done!!! I had so much fun making these two as well. It was a mission trying to carry them both, and the camera, and trying not to trip over Oliver to get photos of them together yesterday. I think one of the things I love the most about custom orders is that they help push you in a direction you maybe wouldn't have gone on your own. For example, I would never have purchased this mohair exclusively for this project on my own. I would have squirreled it away in my fur box, 'saving' it for an unknown project. But now it gets turned into these guys! Also, I would never have thought to make such big bears so squishy and cuddly - falling back on the whole 'limbs need to be firm, joints need to be tight' mantra - but it works so well like this! It takes what would have been a rather large and imposing bear with not much cuddle appeal, into a rather large and imposing bear that you just want to bury your face in!

And the twist in all of this is that these two bears are actually up for general adoption now too! I've just listed them on bearpile, but will add all the photos to the blog as well. I think it would be lovely if they could find a home together, but know that not many homes would have room for two such big giants. So I've listed them individually as well. And in the next few days I plan on making the grizzly bear version too (I cut him out as a supposed 'practice' bear for using the new pattern of mine, but got impatient and wanted to make the 'real' bears first!). So keep an eye out for the jumbo Grizzly to complete the bear family!



These are some photos of Oreo on his own:






And here we have Blizzard's individual photos as well: